International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 04

Optimization Model for Lathe Management

Lim Eng Aik, Syamir Alihan, and Tan Wee Choon

Abstract This paper discusses the optimization model for

automatic lathe continuous process periodic inspection and
replacement of the cutting tool. One of the problems is to reduces
the management costs by integrate theory with probability
statistical method and establish a regular inspection that would
provides adjustment to the average management cost. By using
optimization model to perform computer simulation in order to
solve the process efficiency in term of finding the best period for
cutting tool replacement and also for running inspection for the
machine. Furthermore, with the use of probability adjustment on
the inspection interval, and enables the computing of the average
downtime loss caused during inspection time interval to establish
an objective function that capable to provide the best design
processes and tool replacement period for inspection intervals.
This model is design to effectively reduce the downtime losses
and improve process efficiency. Finally, based on the proposed
model evaluation, some suggestion on improving the
management efficiency and reducing costs are provided at the
end section of this paper.
Index TermsOptimization, modeling, lathe management,
cost function

I. INTRODUCTION

N industry, production costs are often lowered by reducing

manufacturing times. Along with such objective, the
machine tools are also continually being improved in term
of speed, acceleration and force. However, this process is also
continually undergoing optimization. The problem arises
when the machine operates particularly fast but it does not
meet the requirement in terms of quality and tools have
shorter service lives. Thus, to enhance the quality of product
as well as to reduce the management costs in term of periodic
inspection and replacement of cutting tool, an optimization
model developed to fulfill such requirement.
Recently, Brecher et al. [1] has study the interaction
between manufacturing process and machine tool service lives
to improve the efficiency of production system. However, this
model is mainly focus on the process-machine interactions
instead of reducing the management costs which is the main
interest for industry. Neugebauer et al. [2] reported his review
on machine tools that would increase efficiency of

Manuscript received July 1, 2011.

Lim Eng Aik is with Institut Matematik Kejuruteraan, Universiti Malaysia
Perlis, 02000 Kuala Perlis, Perlis, Malaysia (Phone: 604-985-5485; fax: 604985-5432; e-mail: ealim@ unimap.edu.my).
Syamir Alihan was with School of Manufacturing Engineering, Universiti
Malaysia Perlis, Ulu Pauh, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia.
Tan Wee Choon is with School of Mechatronic Engineering, Universiti
Malaysia Perlis, Ulu Pauh, 02600 Arau, Perlis, Malaysia (E-mail:
tweechoon@unimap.edu.my).

manufacturing production and quality. The review place a lot

of comment on cutting tools technology that capable to
increase the output and reduce the loss on defective product,
but lack of discussion on the cost such advance tool and it
effect to small industry.
Lately, Mativenga and Rajemi [3] have introduced an
optimum cutting parameters using minimum energy footprint.
This model aim to reduce the energy consumption of lathe
machine and thus, reducing the production cost. Rajemi et al.
[4] reported on their work in modeling the optimum tool life
for minimum energy footprint. This model enables users to
select their corresponding cutting conditions that can
contribute to longer tool life and reduce tool replacement
costs. Finally, a critical review on metal cutting modeling and
optimization techniques is performs by Mukherjee and Ray
[5]. They revealed the some process parameter relationship
modeling condition that improves the manufacturing operation
process.
Obviously, all the mentioned works are lack of the focus
on cost management that involves a continuous process
periodic inspection cost along with cutting tool replacement
cost. This paper is mainly focus on building an optimization
model for lathe management for industry cost saving
purposes. The outline of this paper is as follows: in Section 2
gives a brief explanation on the problem statement that
become the main motivation for building the model; the model
description and the symbol conventions are provided in
Section 3; Section 4 shows the development of the
optimization model along with suggestion to optimize the
production process; finally, we conclude our finding in
Section 5.

II. PROBLEM STATEMENT

Process to produce the products can be measured in some
units. In order to maintain the normal process, it is necessary
to conduct a regular inspections of the during whole
production process. This inspection process is part of the
procedure to maintain the quality of product which is also part
of industry production process implementation. If the
inspection is performs too often, then the production process
surely performs in normal state processes and tremendously
reduce the number of defective product. However, excessive
inspection consumes high cost and increase the diagnosis time
interval. Although the diagnosis cost can be reduce by the
industry management, but the risk may result in a large
number of defective products being produce which increases
the cost of defective losses. Therefore, this optimization

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International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 04

Other Average failure time interval produce by other factor;

l Number of product produce during inspection period;
p ' Ratio for cases where cutting tool life that less than the
average failure time interval;
Ratio for losses cause by other factor (not include
p1
cutting tool failure).

IV. MODEL DEVELOPMENT

Based on statistical analysis for 100 sets of experimental
data, we obtained the normal distribution for this model
using test as N(280,91.05).
The average management cost for fix period of inspection
on single part, L, consists of the following four components:
I = average inspection fee for individual part;
II = average diagnosis costs for individual parts;
III = average loss generated by checking failure;
IV = average loss caused defective products during the
inspection time interval.
2

Fig. 1. Inspection checkpoint for failure part.

model are tends to seek the best inspection time interval in

term of hour which able to minimize average industry
management cost.

III. MODEL DESCRIPTION

To setup our model, we placed a few assumptions as
follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Process failure is completely random and the occurrence

of
these failures has the same probabilities;
The accumulated record of 100 tool failure is the count
for a tool that has complete each task and found to
produce a defective product during the process;
There are sufficient tool for replacement;
Each defective product produced during failure period is
count as cost losses per product;
During the inspection process, the production does not
stop. During this period, there a part being produced.

Along with the assumption, we also include the symbol

conventions involved in this paper:
f
t
d
1400
k
/
L
n

*
'
set

Failure resulting defective loss of each product cost, f =

93 Ringgit / piece
The cost of each inspection, t = 5 Ringgit / times;
Cost of recovering the process failure to normal, d =
Ringgit / times;
Cost of replacing new tool before failure, k = 470 Ringgit
times;
Average management cost for fix period of inspection on
single part;
Time taken for each inspection (each inspection done
based on number of the product produce);
Average failure time interval;
Average failure time interval for fix period cutting tool
replacement;
Average time interval for tool replacement;
Average failure time interval for fix period cutting tool
replacement with taking consideration on other factor;

The inspection is performs for every n-parts, therefore, the

inspection cost for each part are divided into t / n, which yield
I=t/n
As they only perform diagnosis after inspected failure in the
process, while at average, there will be one failure for each
part. Therefore, the diagnosis fees for each part is divided into
II = d /
For III, due to the production process still continues during
the inspection execution and to carry out such inspection also
require a fix amount of time. Suppose that during the
inspection of a part there were products that have been
produced. Therefore, for every delay cause by inspection
process is defined as l f, then the cost of losses cause by
inspection delay is defined as l / , ultimately makes
III = l /
Finally, to analyze IV, note that the inspection is perform
once for every n-part, if there are defective product found in
some part during the inspection period, in general, there are at
least more than one defective product, then the detail can be
illustrated as in Fig. 1. Note that "0" represents part of the
qualified product while x correspond to defective product
produce from failure part.
For situation (1) in Fig. 1, just a check point process is
abnormal, and other in front is normal, meaning there only
have one defective product; For (2), there is a checkpoint in
previous part which the beginning of not normal process.
Hence, there are two defective products. Lastly, for (n) is the
previous checkpoint, the process is not normal, so there are n
defective products. Therefore, the average defective product
found during the inspection time interval at the check point
1 2 ... n n 1

. The resulting loss for this cause

part are
n
2

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International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 04

can be define as

n 1
2

f , and with average of one failure for

each part, so losses fro each part are

IV =

n 1

n 1
2

f
u

2t u
f

(2)

By considering the diagnosis on the fault location, we can

be set the most appropriate inspection time interval n with the
corrected formula as:
n

2(l u )t
f d /u

(3)

As for the inspection delay that cause the production of l

defective product, l = 1 that produce a defective products will
identify the process is not normal.
By using Eq. (1) to reduce management costs, this allow the
average failure time interval increases, this means by regularly
replacing the tool enable average failure time interval
increases, but as a result of fix periodic replacement of cutting
tools, the tool costs will also increase which ultimately
increase the management fee. Therefore, a computation is
performs to verify this approach is cost-effective or not.
As the process fault losses are mainly cause by the cutting
tool, specifically:
(1) Failure probability cause by other reasons is p1 = 0.05;
(2) The average number of recovering parts during tool failure
period is less than ' piece along with it probability as p'.
After some explanation on the average failure time interval
for fix period cutting tool replacement with coefficient *,
then by placing it into Eq. (1) we obtain Eq. (4) as follow:
k t
d l f n 1 f
(4)
L*

u ' n u * u *
2 u *
While for * it can be calculated as follows:
Number of Produced Product a u u
u*

Number of Failure Product

a p p
In addition, the probability for process failure that caused
by other reasons is as low as 5%, but it should also be taken
into account. Hence, the average failure time interval is u other
is given by:

Number of Failure Product

2
u
In summary, the fix inspection time intervals can be derived
into the following equation for calculating the average
management cost as in Eq. (1).
t d l f n 1 f
(1)
L

n u
u
2 u
The best inspection time interval, even L approach the
smallest n on both sides, we obtained:
t
1 f
L' 2
n
2 u
For order = 0, we obtain:

Number of Produced Product

u other

, which yield,

Number of Produced Product

total number of occur faults

total number of occur faults

Number of Failure Product

1
p

Periodic replacement during the average failure time

interval set, substitute for u * , making uother

obtain the

harmonic mean define as follow:

1
uset
1
1

u * uother
Therefore the optimization model can be summarizing as
follow:

MinLset

t d l f n 1 f

u n uset
uset
2 uset
k

(5)

Let Lset= 0 provide the most suitable inspection time intervals

to be:
n

2u t

f
And the correction formula is:
n

2(uset l )t
f d / uset

(6)

(7)

The model can be solved through computer programming to

achieve one-dimensional search, the results are as follows: the
most suitable inspection intervals n = 15 (cases), the best tool
change intervals ' = 365 (cases), the smallest unit for average
management cost for fix period of inspection on single part, L
= 4.65 (Ringgit).
Assume that industry installing automatic inspection
systems on the lathe machine. Therefore, inspection on each
part fee is consider as zero. With the automatic inspection
systems can avoid losses arising from man make inspection
downtime, thus reducing the average management cost.
Set n as the inspection statistics value, where the number
represent the system sequentially inspection for n-parts that
appears to have m defective product. With the establishment
of dynamic inspection mode, the inspection system will
automatically record the inspection on k parts during normal
process. The following are four the possible cases:
1. Statistics order of n-parts, with defective probability of
less than 2%, then the process consider normal to
continue production;
2. Statistics order of n-parts, with defective probability at
2% but less than 60%, with all inspected parts consists of
defective probability of less than 2%, then the process
consider normal to continue production;
3. Statistics order of n-parts, with defective probability is
higher than 60%, with all inspected parts consists of
defective probability of less than 2%, then the process
consider normal to continue production;

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International Journal of Engineering & Technology IJET-IJENS Vol: 11 No: 04

4.

Statistics order of n-parts, defective rate at 2% less than

60%, with all inspected parts consists of defective
probability at 2%, then the process consider fail and the
system will automatically send a signal to perform
inspection and diagnosis.
V. CONCLUSIONS

From the proposed model, we can infer that the model is

easy to operate and has a wide range of application.
Furthermore, this model provides the average management
cost that capable of solving for the optimum values with the
aids of computer programming. The results show a strong
stability and the solution obtained is consistent with the actual
situation. This proposed mathematical optimization model are
build using the statistical data established and it provided long
term value for guiding the production process and minimize
the management cost. This proposed model still consist spaces
for future improvement. One of the studies that could be
included in this model is the impact of the cutting tool life
which certainly improves the practicality of the model. The
other studies is the consideration on parts of the production
process that still lack of continuity in current model which
will help improve the better scalability to the model. Both the
mentioned improvement are for future work.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]

[5]

C. Brecher, M. Esser, S. Witt, Interaction of manufacturing process and

machine tool, in CIRP ANNALS Manufacturing Technology 58,
2009, pp. 588607.
R. Neugebauer, B. Denkena , K. Wegener, Mechatronic systems for
machine tools, in CIRP ANNALS Manufacturing Technology 56,
2007, pp. 657686.
P.T. Mativenga, M.F. Rajemi, Calculation of optimum cutting
parameters based on minimum energy footprint, in CIRP ANNALS
Manufacturing Technology 60, 2011, pp. 149152.
M.F. Rajemi, P.T. Mativenga, A. Aramcharoen, Sustainable machining:
selection of optimum turning conditions based on minimum energy
considerations, Journal of Cleaner Production, 18, pp. 10591065,
2010.
I. Mukherjee, P.K. Ray, A review of optimization techniques in metal
cutting processes, Computer & Industrial Engineering, 50, pp. 1534,
2006.

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